


This Is Not Your Skin

by LemonScience33



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: 17 and 15 respectively, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Brief mention of underage sex and sexual situations, Deutsch | German, F/M, Implied/Referenced Bullying, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Magical Realism, Magical Tattoos, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1991127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonScience33/pseuds/LemonScience33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five-year-old Newt blinks at his reflection in the mirror, tracing the backwards letters over his heart with the tip of his right index finger. <i>H-E-R-M-A-N-N.</i> </p><p> <i>A strong German name,</i> his father says with approval. Newt doesn’t fully understand until later what the mark means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> A huge thank you to [gendersquare](http://gendersquare.tumblr.com/) and [irisbleufic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic) for the beta. Super mega thank you to [spockhetti](http://spockhetti.tumblr.com/) for the beautiful German translations and invaluable cultural notes. Y'all are the best.
> 
> See end notes for the post that inspired this AU.

Five-year-old Newt blinks at his reflection in the mirror, tracing the backwards letters over his heart with the tip of his right index finger. _H-E-R-M-A-N-N_.

 _A strong German name,_ his father says with approval. Newt doesn’t fully understand until later what the mark means.

When they move to America later that year, Newt realizes that _Hermann_ is a rare name here, so he takes to asking everyone’s middle name, too, just in case.

 

-

 

As the video in sixth grade health class explains: We change as we grow up, and our marks might change, too, because we might have different future soulmates than before. Young people’s marks are highly malleable. These changes are natural and nothing to be concerned about.

Sure enough, Newts’ peers show off their shifting marks. Josh speculates that his mark will turn into his crush’s name, but he’s wrong. It goes from a light-gray _Amanda_ to _Callie_ instead, and none of them know any Callies.

Newt is two years younger than the other sixth-graders, but his mark doesn’t change, just darkens over time. The other kids tease him about it, so he kisses Ashley after school to prove he _does_ like girls, even if his soulmate is some weirdo named _Hermann_. Ashley tells the whole school he’s a bad kisser.

 

-

 

When Newt is 15 and a sophomore at MIT, he meets a 17-year-old, starry-eyed freshman named Max, whose middle name is Hermann.

Thus ensues several weeks of inept flirting that culminates in Newt’s first real kiss, at a party in the Senior Haus basement, closely followed by the removal of Max’s shirt to reveal the name _Sabine_ painted dark and elegant beneath the skin. Newt’s middle name isn’t Sabine at all, but they go on a few dates, just to see if Max’s mark will change. It doesn’t.

 

-

 

Newt sleeps around a little in his last two years of college, nothing serious. He’s 17, his mark has darkened to a charcoal gray, and on the few occasions he gets naked with someone, they see what it says and how dark it is, and sometimes they say ridiculous things.

“So, you’re gay?” yet another person asks, this time a materials science major named Olivia.

Newt stops mid-thrust, because _seriously_? “Are you really gonna ask that while I’m fucking you?”

The question kills the mood, though, and his dick softens inside her. She takes this as an answer to her stupid question.

Newt doesn’t show his chest to anyone from there on out unless he knows for a fact they won’t assume anything.

 

-

 

By the time Newt is 24, he’s tired of waiting for some mythical man to fuck him in the soul, so he takes to having one-night stands with as many _real_ dudes as he can get.

He keeps his shirt on, if he can, and makes them fuck him into the bed. Might as well prepare his asshole for his asshole soulmate, huh?

Then Trespasser comes from the bottom of the ocean, and more kaiju after her, and Newt inks them onto his arms because you can’t tattoo a human soul.

The world is ending, and Newt looks in the mirror and is still astonished when his mark doesn’t say _kaiju_ instead of _Hermann_.

 

-

 

Newt reads a breach physics paper by Gottlieb, Hermann.

 _H-E-R-M-A-N-N_.

If this paper reflects the man who wrote it, then Dr. Gottlieb is sharp and elegant and way too good for Newt. He’s everything Newt has never dared to hope for.

Newt can’t be sure, but something tells him this is it. He can’t find an email address, so he writes a letter.

The reply from Dr. Gottlieb arrives only a week after Newt drops his first missive into the mail. Newt opens it carefully and unfolds it. He holds the letter in his left hand, tracing the mark on his chest with his right.

 _I am gratified by your comments on my work,_ Dr. Gottlieb ( _H-E-R-M-A-N-N_ ) writes. _I took the liberty of reading your papers on kaiju biology, and I agree that we would do well to collaborate. Breach science must take an interdisciplinary approach if we are to vanquish this threat._

Newt’s stomach flips end-over-end. _Is my name on your skin?_ he wants to write, but that’s not the kind of thing you ask someone in your second conversation.

 _Call me Newt,_ he says instead, and Hermann does not.

 

-

 

Dr. Gottlieb gives Newt his email address, so that they can correspond more conveniently. They write for a year and a half, emails coming twice weekly, then daily. They switch to German after a short time.

Over emails, they discuss their own evolving theories and pick apart the methodology and conclusions of every new K-Science paper that comes out. In GChat, they tease each other good-naturedly. Newt was born in Berlin; Hermann, a small town in Bavaria, so naturally, each accuses the other of not speaking _real_ German. They argue about the grammatical gender of Nutella and the proper term for jelly donuts. (“Pfannkuchen,” Newt asserts. “Krapfen,” Hermann incorrectly insists.) They share childhood memories, talk about their favorite composers, anything and everything.

Hermann still refuses to call him Newt, will only call him Newton, but Newt finds it endearing.

'Steht mein Name auf Ihrer Haut?' Newt types into the chat window at least once a month before erasing it.

_Ich hoffe schon, ich verliebe mich nämlich so langsam in dich._

 

 _I hope so,_ he doesn't say, _because I am beginning to love you._

 

-

 

They meet in person on July 15, 2015.

Before too long, Hermann is sniping about Newt's tattoos, his screechy voice, his inability to shut up, anything and everything. Newt can’t figure out what he did wrong, but he imagines it’s probably a number of things. He sends a few emails, trying to smooth things over, but Hermann doesn’t respond.

Newt’s not going to give up, though. His mark is pure black now, and besides that, he just _knows_. Maybe Hermann’s mark was never _Newton_ to begin with. Maybe it was but faded when they met because Newt fucked it up. Maybe Hermann never even had a mark.

Newt doesn’t care. He’ll wait for Hermann’s skin to say _Newton_ , and if it already does, Newt will wait for his name to darken until Hermann can’t ignore it anymore.

This is it for Newt. He can feel it rattling his bones, deeper than a kaiju roar.

 _Hermann_ , Newt’s chest says.

_H-E-R-M-A-N-N._

 

-

 

A year later, Marshal Pentecost throws them into the same Shatterdome, each the head of their respective research division. More and more kaiju spill onto Newt’s body – onto his forearms, his belly, his back. He leaves his chest bare of ink, so that one day when Hermann finally gets his shit together, Newt will unbutton his own shirt, fingers trembling, and show Hermann his name, and Hermann will kiss that spot with his beautiful frog prince mouth, and Newt will finally be able to breathe.

Hermann doesn’t stop hating him, though. Newt tries to endear himself to Hermann, tries to woo him, tries to show him that he’s worthy even if he’s not. Tries so hard.

Hermann doesn’t stop hating him.

(Hermann wouldn’t hate someone whose name was on his skin, would he?)

After a few months, Newt’s mark fades to gray, and he thinks maybe it’s really over. The mark doesn’t disappear, though. A year passes, and it doesn’t disappear, no matter how much Newt wants it to.

 

-

 

Newt wakes up on a Wednesday, traces his right index finger over the seven letters on his chest, and suddenly wants to peel his own skin off. He hops the bus to his tattoo parlor instead.

“I need a custom design,” Newt tells Sarai, who by luck is the artist he usually works with.

He tells her what he wants: Ceramander, its horn-like face sprawling out over both sides of his chest, forest green and dark blue covering the spot above his heart.

“Are you sure?” she says, frowning.

Newt’s skin feels too tight, and he hates it, hates it, _hates it_. “I’m tired of seeing this every time I look in the mirror. I’m tired of not having a choice.”

Sarai’s fingers drift to her own chest, above her heart, where a blackbird covers what's there, or perhaps the fact that nothing is there. “Yeah, I feel you,” she says.

It only takes three sessions until Newt can’t make out the mark anymore. He still can’t quite breathe, but he can look in the mirror and not feel like shit, and that’s a step up.

 

-

 

The Jaeger program is failing. Marshal Pentecost lays off the K-Science researchers one by one, moves them into smaller and smaller working quarters. Newt ends up across the hall from the remnants of Hermann’s division, hears Hermann arguing with his post-docs.

The mark starts to peek out from beneath the dark green, and Newt laughs when he notices it, because he’s never going to escape.

The world is ending, and Newt will never escape.

 

-

 

Newt meets a girl with _Kara_ on her chest in the darkest, most painful black Newt has ever seen.

“She died in a kaiju attack fourteen months after I met her,” Charlotte tells him at five in the morning, when they’ve been up so long they’re effectively high. “We were together for a year, but it wasn’t long enough. It would never have been long enough.”

They fuck as often as possible, and it’s unequivocally better than being alone.

 

-

 

In the drift, Newt is seawater crashing into the ocean, returning to someplace familiar.

Newt sees Hermann draw his knobby knees to his chest, hears children calling him names that don’t make sense, feels himself echo back rejection and isolation and _longing_.

A moment later there is poison, thick and blue and acidic like blood. A multitude of deadly harmonics, drawing them in, drawing them too deep until the pons jerks them back to safety.

The plan isn’t going to work, but they will save the world.

 

-

 

Hermann kisses Newt at the doorway to his quarters.

Hermann kisses him, and Newt’s heartskin burns the most painful black Newt has ever felt, and nothing makes sense.

“I used to hope it would disappear,” Hermann says, his voice shaking. “The things they called me in the locker room. All the other boys had marks like _Daniela_ and _Julia_ , and then me, the odd one out as always, the _crippled, queer lizard-lover_.”

Hermann’s shirt is undone, and he pulls his sweater vest aside. There, above his heart, in bold, dramatic letters:

 _Newt_.

“When we met, you were louder and more colorful than I’d prepared myself for,” Hermann says. “You were impossible not to think about.”

 _N-E-W-T_ , dark and unmistakable. _N-E-W-T._

“I still blamed you, even though it wasn’t your fault.” Hermann’s chest is heaving, and the words come out like he’s been rehearsing them for hours. “You had long since stopped speaking to me by the time I realized I... _wanted_ you, mark be damned.”

And that makes Newt’s breath come shallow, because Hermann looks blotchy and terrified and gorgeous.

“Perhaps your mark was never my name at all,” Hermann says. “Perhaps I mistook things and this was always one-sided. But I must know, please. For my own peace of mind.”

Newt unbuttons his shirt, fingers trembling, and peels himself open like a dissection. He watches Hermann’s eyes widen, watches Hermann look from Newt’s chest to his face and back again

“Since I was four,” Newt says through clenched teeth, heart pounding. “It’s always been you.”

Hermann makes a sobby kind of sound.

“I tried to cover it,” Newt says. “I tried.”

Hermann takes a tentative step forward and presses two fingers to Newt’s chest, to where Newt’s mark is plain to see, pure black under the greens and blues.

“I’m sorry,” Hermann says, “I’m sorry,” and his eyes are shining.

Hermann is crying, and they’ve saved the world, and Newt wants to scream.

Instead, Newt kisses Hermann’s face, and his hands. He kisses the four letters over Hermann’s heart. “Newts aren’t even _lizards_ , man,” he says, too loud in the quiet hallway. “Those kids were dumbfucks.”

Hermann shivers and pulls him close. “Newt,” he says, finally.

“Mein _Name_ steht auf deiner _Haut_ ,” Newt says angrily, fingers sliding through Hermann’s hair. “Mein Name steht auf deiner Haut, und ich liebe dich.”

_My name is on your skin, and I love you._

They stand there in the hallway, clutching each other until they begin to sway from exhaustion.

Newt invites Hermann inside, and they fall asleep tangled up. They wake up together, make love all day until they start to heal, don’t stop making love for months, don’t stop until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

 

-

 

“This is my skin. This is not your skin, yet you are still under it.”

― Iain Thomas

 

-

 

You can tattoo a human soul. You _can_.

All it takes is some time.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a post by [khaaaleesi](http://khaaaleesi.tumblr.com/post/86835214257/au-where-people-are-born-with-their-soulmates-name):
> 
> "AU WHERE PEOPLE ARE BORN WITH THEIR SOULMATES NAME TATTOOED ON THEIR CHEST
> 
> BUT NEWTON GEISZLER COVERS HIS WITH A KAIJU TATTOO WHEN HE REALIZES HIS SOUL MATE HATES HIM
> 
> BC HE CAN THEN PRETEND THAT HE DOESN’T HAVE ONE"


End file.
